As The Hi-Lo Country would have it, Big Boy Matson (Harrelson) is the Last American
Cowboy. In keeping with the twofold implications of the movie's title, The Hi-Lo
Country is about the twilight of the Old West, a world left in the dust of post-WWII
modernizations. While the story's setup would have us expect a reflective elegy for
a dying breed, the movie instead straddles turf that might better described as Western
noir. Sexual tension and deceit overtake the cowboys-on-the-increasingly-mechanized-range
elements, and before you know it we're cherchezing the femme. The source material
for the film is acclaimed Western author Max Evans' 1961 novel of the same title.
The book was adapted for the screen by Walon Green (whose first screenplay was Sam
Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch). From the time the book was first published until the
time of his death, Peckinpah tried unsuccessfully to mount a production of The Hi-Lo
Country and it's easy to see what drew the filmmaker to this brooding tale of two
best friends uprooted in a land in transition and the woman who came between them.
The potential for timeless drama is evident in the premise but the movie quickly
loses all sense of compelling narrative tension and has little of the stunning visual
dimensions we have come to expect in Westerns. Big Boy and Pete (Crudup) meet up
shortly before the war and become fast friends. Upon their return, the men aspire
toward cattle ranching but find that the day of the independent rancher is passing
into oblivion. Big Ed Love (Elliott) is the area's rapacious cattleman and the young
men's nemesis. Big Ed's foreman is a cuckolded husband who is married to the trampy
Mona (Arquette), who is carrying on a torrid thing with Big Boy while simultaneously
flirting casually with Pete. Pete discovers her duplicity and spends the rest of
the movie moony-eyed and frustrated. It saps a lot of the story's forward progression
and leaves you wishing that someone would knock some sense into this droopy character
whose constant voiceover narration additionally lends the film a decidedly noirish
tone. Arquette's Mona is a transparent figure, as provocative and deadly as any film
noir dame. As Big Boy, Harrelson is a hellraising dynamo, and his energy brings the
only real sparks of life to the screen. (An added attraction, however, is the film's
music, which features authentic tunes performed by the likes of Don Walser, Marty
Stuart, Leon Rausch, Chris O'Connell, and Johnny Degollado.) Stephen Frears might
seem an odd choice to direct this Western given his history of success with such
films as The Grifters, and such idiosyncratically British films as My Beautiful Laundrette,
Prick Up Your Ears, and The Snapper. Yet the problem derives mostly from the film's
diminishment of its overarching Western themes in favor of a pre-fated love story.
By the time The Hi-Lo Country reaches its climax, it is easily mistaken for just
another round of horseplay. Giddyup.